RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 6] The Cow Level

Mr. Brown was the code name given to the ID-Sol copies that worked for the NMX research and development arm called MORGAN. One of which was busy packing explosive materials along with the ID-Cow blood separated out by the Neppies Beef Farm grinder into barrels for distribution around Funky City along with a few other ID-Sol copies.

When another one of the ID-Sol copies arrived, explaining that the Nepleslians were finally sending in their attack unit, this particular Mr. Brown checked his SMG, his supply of grenades, and then went back to work, trying to finish their task before this area was attacked.

When A massive Aggressor power armor crashed in through the elevator and began shooting up the place he dove behind one of the barrels he had been packing. He was certain that the Neps wouldn’t be so careless as to fire at a barrel full of explosives. He primed a grenade and looked over the barrel.

When he saw Naomi firing at the barrel, the last thing going through his head was, “Damnit…”

---

Avel’s bolt missiles bounced off the metal plating of the ID-Cow, tearing chunks of flesh out of the creature’s hide as it continued to charge forward. The HPAR had the same effect, tearing chunks of metal and flesh from the creature which didn’t even slow it down.

Phaedra’s line of sight was blocked by Harm and Avel standing in front of her down the hallway. She’d only be able to get off a single shot as Harm moved to one side and Avel turned to try and get out of the way. A large portion of the side of the creature’s head was removed by the attack, but its mass continued forward.

Cedric had a line of sight to the edges of the cow, his mass repeater showering the hallway with rounds that ricocheted around the hallway and occasionally off the shields of the other marines. His plasma grenade ended up falling right at Avel’s feet.

In the next instant the entire hallway heaved upward for a brief moment, then collapsed downward as an explosion tore through the building, causing structural supports to buckle and the entire hallway to tilt downwards. With the entire hallway now slanted, the Id-Cow was having a hard time getting a grip to keep moving forward, and ended up sliding downwards and into the metal teeth of the beef grinder which rapidly tore the creature apart in a red puff of beefy deadness. Cedric’s plasma grenade then detonated, covering the mashing metal teeth with a white hot flame. The rest of the marines were in a similar situation, parts of the building above them were now being supported by heavily damaged pieces of metal, the hallways around then all were slanted downwards toward the feed chute, and below them was the Neppies Beef grinder, which had just survived the exposition that tore the building apart and still easily ripped apart ten tons of beef and metal like it was paper.

---

@ Matteo and Naomi

For the two marines on the ground floor the entire world was black aside from a text readout from their power armors.

Sensors Damaged,

Shield Strength at 2%,

Damage Detected… armor plating strength reduced, environmental steal still intact…

The readouts would continue for a while, until finally.

Attempting Auto Repair for sensor systems. Standby.

Their support drones would detach and start hovering directly above their heads. Drei would then patch the sensor data from the drones through to the power armors so that they could have some view of what was going on around them. There was no trace of the ID-Sols they had been fighting. Matteo and Naomi had been fairly successful at hitting their targets, but in a fraction of a second the first exploding barrel set off another, and then another, setting off grenades and explosive materials that were stashed around the room. Pieces of metal support structure were now littered throughout this room and one entire wall was missing, exposing a loading dock area with several flatbed cars each holding a variety of objects covered with tarps. A few ID-Sols were there as well, knocked out by the massive blast. Above them was the rest of the squad, now trapped in a giant funnel that led down into the massive grinding machine.

In addition to loosing the mooneye sensors on their armors, Naomi’s repeater had been damaged beyond repair and Matteo’s HPAR was simply gone, having been tossed through a wall by the force of the explosion.

Even through his armor, he still felt like his ears were ringing from the explosion, and he grabbed on to the nearest hand-hold of the cage walls as the ground suddenly started to develop a steep incline. The grinder was at the other end, shredding through the cow like it was nothing. That meant the only thing between them and the grim fate below was...air.

"What the hell was that?!" Cedric asked, looking down to the shredder.

Darux's confidence immediately turned into surprise as the building lurched toward the ID-Cow. The only thing that stopped him from falling forward was the fact that he jammed the warhammer into the ground and grabbed one of the cage walls. All he saw as he looked up was the flaming shredder. The only other thing was the grenade launcher he had placed down now sliding over to the shredder. "Dam, can someone get that?" he asked, his voice sounding more annoyed than worried. Truth was, he was very shaken from the explosion and was not about to leave the spot he had made for himself.

Pain.

The whole world was Pain.

For several seconds, Naomi Scroggins knew only Pain.

"Ugh."

Her eyes creaked open, and she was momentarily alarmed when she realized she could see nothing. nothing, that was, except for a bright line of text, followed by several more. Slowly, her mind realized that a maintenance report was being displayed.

"Ah, crap," the Marine complained bitterly. The fuzzy state of memory had begun to clear, and she recalled shooting at those barrels with the Repeater, and then, unexpectedly, seeing them explode. She had been horrified and shocked in that moment, calling out to Matteo to duck, to maybe find some cover, to do something.

Not that it would have done any good. Their position had been open to begin with, the armored suits their only real protection. Now, she could really only hope he was living.

Her situation improved moments later, when the drone's feed patched in to her suit, allowing her to survey the environment once more.

How was that damn machine still operating?

"Matteo?" she called weakly, hoping the other Marine was conscious. "Matteo, we need to move."

Not waiting on a response, she tried to stand, managing it on the third effort. She opened a comms channel.

"Harm, this is Scroggins. I'm on the ground level with Matteo. There's been an explosion of some kind. Are you guys alright? They've got some kind of a big machine running down here, but I think they're all dead now."

Finished with that, she scanned the area briefly, and began to advance in the direction of the machine.

When her assault failed Avel turned to run, only to have shots bounce off her shields and the hallway to suddenly heave upwards. She was briefly thrown off balance as the hallway then sloped downwards but managed to stay on her feet by grabbing onto the barred wall.

Then a grenade launcher slid down the hallway and bumped into Avel's feet as she looked around to see if everybody else was alright. She instinctively picked it up with a free hand but had other questions at the moment.

"What happened?" She asked.

As the dust and debris cleared, Phaedra managed to find a handhold to on an exposed piece of rebar to prevent herself from plummeting down the now slanted hallway.

"Everyone alright?" asked Phaedra. Placing the LBR on the floor near the stairwell, she pushed herself up onto her feet and braced herself against the wall. Retrieving her weapon, she quickly surveyed her surroundings. Things were not looking good: The massive meat-grinder waited at the end of the hallway like a hungry beast, and the rest of the squad was scattered about the hallway, trying desperately not to slide into the grinder's maw. Determined not to be trapped, Phaedra began to search the area for a way out.

Matteo grunted in pain, crushed by a great weight. And then she moved. Relief.

"Ugh. As much as I like the idea of you on top of me Naomi, don't do that while in an Aggressor. You're heavy." The smaller Hostile spoke somewhat seriously before getting out from under the larger Power Armor's crater. Things were not looking good already; the Monoeye was out, he was reduced to using a drone for an eye, and the HPAR was gone. He sighed; nothing he could do about that now. One armored hand pulled out the three foot long 'Light' Submachine Pistol that always came with the armor, while the other hand reached over and unsheathed a foot long Vibrosaw.

"I guess I'll have to get creative." Matteo remarked before adding his voice to the comm. "Witt here; they have explosive barrels. Advise; take caution with weapons fire." He tersely spoke. The Hostile then moved to investigate the strange setup the NMX ID-SOLs had.

Naomi watched attentively through the drone's viewpoint as it scanned her surroundings. The whole area had not been destroyed per se, but things had sure been knocked about by that explosion.

Her mind was going through a list of what weapons she had left.

'Flamethrower, SMG, Vibrosaw Knife, Plasma Grenades. We're cool.

"Ugh. As much as I like the idea of you on top of me Naomi, don't do that while in an Aggressor. You're heavy."

Naomi grinned at that, though her mind was distracted by the fact she had just noticed a few, potentially not dead enemies in the area. They looked to be out of it for now, but that could change.

"Well now, Mr. Witt," she replied, her voice mock formal. "I didn't know how much you liked the woman to be on top. Perhaps you are naturally submissive?"

Her grin was just about face-splitting now, and her voice returned to its normal tones even as her eyes scanned the area.

"Maybe we can experiment when we get back to the ship, if you could refrain from callin' me fat again. You know how sensitive I am."

Reaching back with one hand, Naomi produced the SMG from her suit's body and approached the immense grinding machine more closely.

"I don't like that this damn thing is running, Matteo. They were using it here for...something. We should shut it down, yeah? You see a control unit of some kind around here? A panel, maybe?"

"Oh, what. You don't like trying new things?" He asked the other marine jokingly. As much as he was interested in looking at the device, first thing first; the Light SMG burped out bursts into each unconscious ID-SOL, minus one. They needed someone to talk, because Naomi did have a point; ominous machines were simply ominous, and should be turned off without any expertise on said ominous machine. Matteo plodded about, dragging the one living enemy back to the strange device with a good few meters between him and it for good measure.

"So. How you feel about making this guy feel submissive when he wakes up? We do need answers, you know?" Matteo gave a devilish grin from under the armored suit. Too bad she couldn't see.

The shock trooper running the show would start picking himself up off the floor, the command room of the building having been ripped apart by the blast. He would start floating towards the exit door, heading down towards the loading docks as he broadcast a message to the ID-Sols downstairs.

“How many of the bombs did you manage to load?”

“We’ve got four cases worth, 25 in total.”

“BAH! INCOMPITENCE!!!” The NMX roared, “Get the train moving, I will catch up…”

---

In the hallway above the grinder, harm was holding onto a ledge made by the hole she blew into a side hallway as Wazu reached down to pull her up into the side area.

“See, this is why we can not have nice things.” Wazu prodded as he helped Harm.

“Oh please, like you haven’t been in worse… Drei care to offer an explanation?” Harm said on a private channel to Wazu as she listened to reports coming in from the other soldiers.

Drei would quickly replay some video from Naomi’s power armor sensors showing what the NMX were up to and offer her analysis of the situation, her voice chiming in over the commander’s channel. “The blast seems to have been triggered by multiple explosive stores being set off on the ground level of the structure. Packaging ID-Cow blood together with the explosive implies that they were manufacturing a biological agent dispersal device.”

“Right… Pass that along to the other Marines,” Harm would say before opening a channel to Naomi.

---
@ Naomi


“We’re fine up here but we’re sitting ontop of that grinder. Shutting it off would make me feel a lot better. Drei’s saying your armor took some serious hits, are you guys still operational?” Harm said.

“I would really like to see what is on that loading dock and get a sample of some ID-Cow blood.” Wazu would add.

“Right, looks like you drew the short straw today Naomi. If you can find a way to get us down to the floor you’re on … that would be great.”

Directly infront of Naomi was the grinder, its thick metal skin was dinted and dinged in a few places. As it chugged away, tearing apart metal and concrete that fell into the top, it was adding a flaming metal and rock dust to the thin coating of ID-Cow blood that coated the room. The device did not seem to be connected to anything or even bolted down to the floor, its massive weight keeping it in place after the explosion. There was also a single hinged access panel on the device with a faint green lettering on it reading. ‘GrindMaster SuperDelux 31,000 : The GRINDINATOR, see inside for operation instructions.’

---
@Matteo

The ID-Sols died easily, already having been knocked out by the explosion they were in no position to put up a fight. Each was armed with a basic Zen Arms Machine Pistol and a belt of grenades around their chests. Each ID-Sol also looked exactly the same, no hair, brown eyes, and exact same features.

The flatbeds by the loading dock would then lurch forward and start moving, disappearing into a side tunnel in moments as an unseen monorail train began pulling them along. An NMX shock trooper would burst through a side door around the same time. It would fly to the tunnel at high speeds, ignoring the two marines on the lower level entirely as it shouted,

“DAMN YOU PHILIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIpppppppppp……"


---
@cyborgakadjmoose

The Stairwell seemed to be built much more solidly than the metal cage hallways that the rest of the squad was stuck in. Large cracks had formed in the concrete walls and in places entire chunks had been torn off, exposing metal rebar. There were even serious cracks in the staircase itself however the entire shaft that held the staircase seemed intact. The doors that led out onto the roof, and out into the hallway, were both still intact.

The hallway itself was slanted downward, with the grinder at the bottom, its flaming mouth and mashing metal teeth still going at full steam, tearing apart pieces of metal and concrete that fell into them like they were tissue paper. The very bottom of the hallway, right before it emptied out into the grinder, was only a single story above the ground level where Naomi and Matteo were, thick metal bars being the only thing that made up the hallways floor.

Finally, there were several side hallways, all of which were blocked off by pieces of metal that had been moved into place on small moving platforms attached to the floor, devices originally designed to move the ID-Cows around this facility.

As Cedric listened to Drei's analysis of what the NMX were doing (due to Harm ordering that it be passed along.), he quirked a brow. They were making a dispersal agent? Even though he had never had a chance to really finish his education, even he knew that meant they had to have done something to the ID-Cow blood. Now, while all that was well-and-good: a majority of the squad was still hanging in a hall above a. Giant. Grinder[/]i. If any of them were to fall in, it would most likely shred them to pieces like they were nothing more than one of the cows that used to be stored in the facility.

Until Naomi shut it off, they were pretty much stopped in terms of forward advancment.

"So." Cedric sighed, "Who wants to sing?"

Naomi was pondering the grinding machine when Harm's voice finally broke through the silence of the comms channel. Her ears perked up at her words.

“We’re fine up here but we’re sitting on top of that grinder. Shutting it off would make me feel a lot better. Drei’s saying your armor took some serious hits, are you guys still operational?”

"Ah," she looked around "Yeah...about that. My armor's damaged, but it can still function. My shields are just about fried, and I'm down to a maintenance drone for visuals right now. If that goes, I may just have no choice but to remove my helmet. That would not be good. Matteo's in pretty much the same boat as me."

“I would really like to see what is on that loading dock and get a sample of some ID-Cow blood.”

That was Wazu speaking, and Naomi cringed. She knew what was next.

“Right, looks like you drew the short straw today Naomi. If you can find a way to get us down to the floor you’re on … that would be great.”

Naomi blinked at that. She'd been wrong. She nodded at that last part, but quickly remembered Harm would not be able to see it.

"Yeah," she said quickly. "Yeah, sure. I'm already on it."

Her eyes had just turned back to the machine when the flatbeds began moving. Moments later, an ID-Sol came flying through after the train at high speed, shouting about...Phillip?

"Let them go!" she barked to Matteo, hoping to stop him from behaving rashly. "Those flatbeds were probably loaded with more explosives, and right now the last thing we need is more boom."

Next, she opened a channel to Harm again.

"Harm, we've got a problem. There's a line of flatbed cars which just left the loading docks loaded, probably with more explosives."

Even as she spoke, the Marine's eyes scanned the grinder, seeking any kind of controls, a board, a panel of some kind, a...there it was!

"‘GrindMaster SuperDelux 31,000 : The GRINDINATOR." That got a raised eyebrow. "See inside for operation instructions."

Well, that seemed simple enough.

"Sounds simple enough," the Marine said, and quite simply grabbed the metal panel, and gave it a good, solid yank. Off it came without a fight.

"Now," she said as she peered inside. "What have we here? There's got to be a switch, or some kind of a plug...at least some wires."

Darux sighed in relief as he saw Avel catch his grenade launcher, "Thanks for getting that. Thought for a sec I was about to lose it."

As Darux listened to Drei's analysis, he grinned. Though he was not one for fire, explosives seemed to agree with him.

He then sighed, he was still stuck here as well as everyone else with that grinder here and was about to suggest trying to break it from the top when Cedric said, "So. Who wants to sing?" Darux barked a laugh as he answered back, "If I started, you would regret ever asking"

"This is Witt; I got a visual on an up-armored NMX Shocktrooper boarding that train before its departure. Money's on it being the brains behind this operation." Using the drone, Matteo looked down on the sole surviving ID-SOL under his Hostile's boot, tearing off the bandoleer of grenades and SMG. "We also have one surviving enemy combatant, incapacitated at the moment." Careful not to put too much pressure and crush his catch, Matteo tossed the bandoleer with a "Catch!" to Naomi.

"You feel like taking that thing out in a boom? Or would you settle for pulling the switch?"

Avel surveyed her surroundings for a moment and processed what she had heard. Someone apparently thought it was a good idea to set off explosives inside a building while everybody was still inside. Whether it was on purpose or an accident she had no idea.

She took a moment to toss the grenade launcher to Darux and then heard the NMX shock trooper shouting. Avel immediately sent her drone down the hallway, over the meat grinder and after the squid. Hopefully she'd find out where it was heading.

Then she spoke on the coms. "Ok, I have my drone following after it. Can I be the one to take it out once we get down there? I kind of have this new weapon I was hoping to field test."

“What is the top speed of the trains around here? One, Two hundred MPH tops?” Harm asked over a general channel.

“The Rail system is not rated to handle anything over one fifty in most places.” Wazu replied.

“Yeah… We can totally catch that with our power armor rockets.” Harm ended up reaching to the side hall to get a better grip with her free hand while she waited, not too keen on trying to break her way down to the bottom floor while the grinder was running. “We need an opening down to the ground floor first and I don’t feel like trying to make one with explosives… AVEL! Less talking, more digging. If you can pull some of those bars up on the floor so we can get down to the ground level that would be great. Anyone still close to the stairwell should just fly back up to the roof and take the elevator shaft down.”

---
@ Naomi

Inside of the GrindMaster’s operations panel was a single, somewhat cracked, display that flickered to life when the covering was removed.

“HI!” A cheerful voice said, “Welcome to the Awesomecorp GrindMaster!” A bright yellow smiley face was occasionally being displayed on the damaged screen, speakers inset into the side playing the message as the machine’s AI tried to talk to the marine infront of it. “It has been two months since the last maintenance cycle, The outer paneling of this machine needs repair or replacement. I can order the necessary parts and maintenance work for you if you’d like!”

---
@Avel

Avel’s probe had already been heavily damaged by the ID-Cow, but it could still fly and started working its way through some of the side hallways, trying to find a path down to the ground floor to follow the train but at the moment the only two ways down there would be to go through the floor of the hallway near where the grinder was, or to backtrack up to the elevator shaft on the top of the building and use the path Matteo and Naomi took.

---
@ Marines in the hallway

As the machine below them continued to rumble, its vibrations started to be transmitted through the parts of the hallway that were touching the edge of the feeder on top. This caused the metal bars that made up the hallway to vibrate more and more until the entire hallway shifted slightly, the bottom slipping into the feeder of the machine and getting chewed up. Above them, parts of the building would start creeking, metal shavings and bits of concrete starting to fall down onto the hallway then either fall through the bars down to the bottom floor or if they were to big for that, they would slide down the hallway into the machine.

Then, the heavy metal door that had been previous connected to door that led into the hallway broke free, the pins holding it to the door pulling chunks of concrete out of the wall as it fell, the entire mass falling and sliding down the hallway towards the grinder.

Avel was beginning to see why nobody on the ship didn't like Harm and it wasn't just because she was a freelancer or a neko. She then felt a very real form of fear when the hallway shifted slightly. She wasn't an architect but she knew from experience where this was heading. Only this time she and everybody else present were likely to be cut into tiny pieces.

Sliding as gracefully and quickly as she could given the situation. Avel reached the barred section of the floor and pulled out her vibroknife. She then began cutting through the metal as quickly as she could. Both to allow the probe through so it could chase after the squid and to get out of the hallway before it collapsed.

Cedric had never felt more useless than right now. Here he was, a trained demolitionist, and he was totally incapable of helping his fellow Marines get out of this mess. Instead he was just forced to wait in silence as Naomi tried to find a way for getting them out of this mess...until the hallway started shifting again. Looking around him, Cedric watched as chips of cement started to fall away from the roof, and he knew that he needed to do something.

Moving carefully towards Avel, he retrieved his own knife. However, before he could help Avel with the cutting he suddenly saw a grate coming towards them. He didn't even take the time to realize it was the very same grate that had been blocking their retreat back in to the stairwell when the ID-Cow had first emerged.

"Avel, look out!" Cedric warned.

He crouched down between her and the grate. His plan? Well, it was simple. He would try to stop it. If he couldn't do that (after all, anything can happen on the field of battle), he'd at least try to get it completely past Avel to avoid it hitting her while she tried to cut open the floor.

Avel stood up and looked behind her to see what Cedric was shouting about. She saw the metal grate sliding towards her. She immediately reached upwards and activated her pus pull system, attaching herself to the ceiling and letting the grate slide harmlessly underneath her.

"Uh, thanks." She managed to force out to Cedric. Not really used to giving thanks to others.

@ Avel and Cedric

Harm ended up making a short rocket jump, popping her armor up into the side nook where Wazu was and letting the grate fall past her in the hallway. The heavy metal door would end up hitting Cedric fairly hard, rolling over his back and continuing to slide down until it hit the grinder at the bottom of the hallway. The thick metal quickly crumpled under the force of the machine’s mechanical teeth, getting shredded like so much tissue paper before being spewed out into the room below as a metallic powder.

---
@Matteo and Naomi

“Matteo,” Harm said as she lowered herself back into the hallway and began to slide down towards where the other marines had been digging. “If you can’t get the grinder off immediately then you and Naomi need to start off after that train. Make sure the rest of us can find it by the time we get down there. We’re digging our way to the bottom floor and will catch up as soon as possible. Wazu’s going to take your prisoner to the Blues outside.”

The machine itself was still chugging away, continuing to tear up pieces that fell into it from above as the floating smiley face displayed on its screen continued talking. “Are you here to decrease the grind quality or speed? This machine has been running for 28 hours straight at its maximum level and could run uninterrupted for another 14 minutes, longer if the grind quality was reduced.”

---

The monorail train had left the station a minute or so ago, the NMX shock trooper quickly catching up and finding a pair of ID-Sols standing on the back of the train. “Make sure we haven’t been followed.” He boomed as he floated overhead, just barely skidding between the tops of the tarps that were on the train and the ceiling of the cylindrical tunnel that they were traveling through. His tendrils tore off one of the tarps, revealing a stack of barrels, he grabbed several and then started floating his way towards the front of the train as the ID-Sols made preparations.

“Hey, We heard they had power armors right?” One asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, then our guns aren’t going to be enough then.” He said with a smile across his face. “That means we get to use the big stuff. Go back and grab some bigger guns, I’m going to get one of these bombs ready.”